Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: CAMP (08/18/22)
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TITLE: Are You a, Happy Camper? | Previous Challenge Entry
By Doug Laird
08/24/22 -
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For many, camping is a popular form of travel and vacationing.
While not having all of the comforts of home, such camps are designed to be the means of preparing food, maintaining shelter, getting rest, and in some cases, receiving entertainment.
There are other types camps that have a infamous history.
During foreign and civil wars, many atrocities took place in the prisoners of war camps, and in the camps of civilian war refugees.
Many Native Americans suffered and died as a result of forced marches and camps while being relocated to other parts of the country.
During World War 2, there were concentration camps in Nazi-occupied territories in which rounded-up Jews were tortured, starved, experimented on, forced to engage in hard manual labor, while awaiting systematic extermination. Many suffered and died due to the horrid means of transportation to, and the unsanitary living conditions in, these concentration camps.
Approximately 120,000 Japanese descendants living in the United States were rounded up and placed in interment camps following the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Be it for good or evil, pain or pleasure, the one thing that camps have in common is that they are temporary in nature.
Vacationers return to their permanent residences when the purpose for the camp has been accomplished.
From a spiritual standpoint, our appointed time on Earth is our temporary residence, with a permanent one to be experienced when we break camp (1).
For some, this temporary residency will be a relatively good experience. For others, this temporary residence will be a living Hell on Earth. For most of us, this temporary residency will be a mixed bag of both moderate pain and pleasure.
Many human beings will take all available means, both good and reckless, to experience pleasure and to escape pain. Sad to say, but many of these means only turn out to be the source of greater pain, suffering, and discontent.
This present world is the devil’s domain (2). The devil is NOT (presently) confined to Hell, waiting for all the bad people to arrive. While there are some fallen angels incarcerated in the maximum-security section of Hades (3), the devil and millions of the members of the Eph. 6: 12 forces of evil are engaged in spiritual warfare with the members of the human race, here on Earth.
God surrounds the camp of His people (4). Nothing can penetrate this defensive force field without His consent. This does not mean that there isn’t going to be adversity (5). God allows or sends adversity to enter the camp of His people when He has a divine objective in mind.
Unlike God, the devil is not omnipresent. Satan can only be in one place at a time. The devil relies on his forces of evil to carry out much of his plans. Only in the most critical cases does he himself get personally involved.
To the extent that God allows, the devil and his Eph. 6: 12 forces of evil have great influence in the religious, political, and economic activities here on Earth.
The prosperity of the wicked (6) is a difficult hurdle for God’s people to overcome along the road to spiritual maturity, and is a stumbling block for many.
Decisions (7) that we make during our relatively short residency here on Earth is what determine where and how our permanent residency in Eternity will be experienced.
Even if we were to live for centuries, as did many of the earlier generations of Man (8), and got to enjoy all that life here on Earth had to offer during most of that time, the ominous words of Mark 8: 36 would still become an experiential reality for many.
“For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul (Mark 8: 36 NASB)?”
Contrary to what the “name it and claim it” and or the “giving to get” groups have to say, the campground of an advancing disciple (9) is not all peaches and cream. For many it will be prove to be a painfully expensive road to tread, and one on which they will not receive what they thought (10) they had coming while here in camp.
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(1) 2Cor. 5: 1 (2) Luke 4: 6 (3) Jude 1: 6) (4) Isa. 54: 17 (5) Job 2: 10 (6) Psalms 73: 2-12, 17 (7) John 8: 24/John 3: 18/1Cor. 3: 14, 15 (8) Genesis 5 (9) 2Tim. 3: 12 (10) Matt. 19: 27
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